Saturday morning, 6:30 at the latest- eight students from HCC arrived at Exeter airport to board the next flight heading to Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris. The adventure started from the minute we set foot in France…okay…. Maybe waiting a few hours for the train isn’t exactly adventurous but we found ways to entertain ourselves, ways like…. Doing the Harlem Shake under the stairs (at the station, in public!) with Ms Theeten joining in too! And (in Mr Dagger’s case) … eating? For the last half an hour, Ben decided to make conversation in French with the French family sitting next to us. In the end everyone joined in and we had an amusing time learning a lot of new words.
The train finally arrived and we were off to Strasbourg! The TGV was really fast… It’s a shame no-one could look out the window because it was dark, I think those of us who hadn’t met our pen friends in England were most nervous.
So we arrived in Strasbourg to be whisked away by our wonderful families. After tea and some friendly introductions (and reunions) bed was the next best thing because as I later found out, shopping can prove to be quite exhausting!
Monday was the first day out together; we arrived at school with our penfriends… (Honiton really needs a tram system!! They are so cool, reminds me of huge snakes winding through the city.) Our penfriends went to lessons and we went out… after Mr Dagger had had his café crème…of course. So Monday was the day we took the boat trip, I haven’t travelled much but I can certainly say that Alsace is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen! While on the boat, we had to wear headphones so that we could listen to the commentary in English… (who at times put on the voice of a pirate to shout at an imaginary parrot!) After the boat everyone was hungry so we split up for free time (that’s where the shopping comes in…) and lunch, although due to the weather (consisting of snow, rain and somewhere around -1 degrees) there was no way anyone was going to sit outside so we managed to find a restaurant that will let you eat a packed lunch of your own. And last but not least for Monday…. We visited the first museum of the week, ‘Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ – the beautiful palace where the Emperor Napoleon stayed!
Tuesday, the same morning routine and then off to the un-missable cathedral which we were guided round by the wonderful Veronique. The whole scale of the cathedral is difficult to take in… I felt so small looking up at the stain glass windows way above us…. There’s just one big empty space filled with really creepy statues (seriously… lifelike statues are really scary!), tourists, candles, pillars and beautiful carvings that adorn the borders of the lower ceilings. It’s amazing such a structure can be built! (It’s a shame giants don’t exist because that would explain…or it would make sense of how such a huge and beautiful structure can be built!) After we’d been on a tour around Strasbourg and eaten lunch I was beginning to hope I wouldn’t encounter any more glaring gargoyles… It was just my luck that the ‘Musée de L’oeuvre de Notre Dame’(yes, it seems that every cathedral in France is called Notre Dame because in French it literally means ‘Our Lady’) was packed with them, although it made me laugh that some looked like aliens from Doctor Who….(really, what were the stone-masons thinking?!)
Wednesday I feel, was quite solemn to start with because we visited Struthoff concentration camp. The experience was altogether very interesting but incredibly sad for those of us who have never visited a concentration camp before… and for those who already have. The weather up in the mountains was bleak and it was snowing (I don’t know how many degrees but I know it was very cold!! Five layers and I was still shivering!) So the weather somewhat set the mood as we walked around the camp. Unfortunately we couldn’t see all of it because the ground was too slippery but what we did see was well worth while and we learnt a lot.
Our last day with our penfriends! Thursday we spent the morning in school with them. I don’t know about the others but I went to a history and a physics lesson… in French … which I struggled to understand! It really does pay to listen in class…..
We had Lunch in the school canteen although I couldn’t help but notice, where was the vegetarian meal?! After we had filled ourselves eating, chicken nuggets, couscous and beef (not amused when the teachers got us to believe we were eating dog… thank goodness it wasn’t!) we went to another museum, ‘Musée Historique’ where my personal highlight was watching a holographic video… it looked so weird and the dimensions confused me but anyway… moving on…. We tried on helmets and medieval dress (a very fetching set of fashion items…not!) Especially funny when Mr Smith, who joined us halfway through the week put on a ruff and really strange hat. With what time we had left we went on a last minute shopping spree then came back for a group photo with the picturesque river and Alsacien houses as a perfect backdrop.
Finally… it was time to go home… the day we’d been hoping for and dreading. It was time to say goodbye to Strasbourg and to our penfriends and catch the 9:46 train back to Charles de Gaulle, then on the plane and back to England where the weather didn’t exactly welcome us (well, what did we expect?) but our families did! We went home (in my case to a cake and a welcome banner… result…!) and probably thought to ourselves, “the week has gone so quickly!”
On behalf of Ben Mason, Morgan Davy, Holly Miller-Ratcliffe, Freya Westall, Hayden Fenton, Rebecca Denslow and Schezhana Klimentanova and I, would like to say thank you to… Mrs Theeten and Mr Dagger who organised and brought us to Strasbourg and back safely, to Mr Smith who joined us halfway and who enjoyed showing me ‘flick fishing’ on his iPod whilst on the plane and finally, to our wonderful host families… for making the whole trip… AMAZING!
It wouldn’t have been the same without any of these people.
By Sophie Land.
